If Katy Perry had a child with Patrick Stump of Fall Out Boy, it would be called Shallows.

The Los Angeles-based duo was formed by singer, Dani Poppitt, and guitarist/producer, Marshall Gallagher, following a meet at an out of control house party.

Their debut single, ‘Summer Sucks’, is a lament of a tired relationship under the slow crushing weight of last year’s Californian heat wave.

We caught up with the duo and discussed the hot weather in Los Angeles, and the array of their musical influences.

Good to meet you Shallows. Tell us more!

MG: Hi, thanks for talking to us! We’re a brand new band from the heart of LA, just two friends trying to write some killer songs and have fun. We’ve been writing together for awhile now and we’re both involved in plenty of other projects, but when we wrote this song it seemed only fitting that we should keep it for ourselves and build a band around this sound.

You’re a new act. How are you going to distinguish yourselves from the competition?

MG: There are a lot of guy/girl pop duos out there, especially in this city. It’s going to be difficult to stick out, but what we lack in notoriety we make up for in musicianship. I think the songs speak for themselves, Summer Sucks is just a little taste of what we’ve got brewing.

DP: We’re going to distinguish ourselves with well written pop songs. By marrying shoegaze and indie lyrical content with music that Katy Perry could get behind. Our songs will dig their way into the heads of our competitors and live there for weeks.

Your debut single is called ‘Summer Sucks’. Does the temperature in Los Angeles have an negative impact on your music, as well as a positive one?

MG: Haha… it doesn’t affect the music as much as it affects my sleep quality. We did most of our writing in my apartment this summer and it was crazy hot (like, sometimes it would get hotter in there than it was outside, and it was hovering around 90 every day), but that may have actually made our material more visceral. I guess there was this desperate urgency to nail takes and crank out quality stuff as quickly as possible, in order to get the hell out of my sauna. Performance gets better sometimes under pressure, right?

DP: Temperature changes the state of matter; it has an effect on the mind. Hot or cold, we use what we can as inspiration.

Describe your sound in three words.

DP: Moody Glitter Pop.

MG: All the feelings.

Where do you cite your musical influences from?

DP: The Beatles, Smashing Pumpkins, Hole, Katy Perry.

MG: I honestly don’t listen to anything that sounds remotely like Shallows. Dani gives me shit all the time because I have no idea who is killing it in the Pop world right now. I grew up on classic rock, 90s alternative and emo for the most part, and I’m a guitar player by trade… so I’m a sucker for anything heavy and pretty. My favorite band of all time is The Smashing Pumpkins.

We love new music at Indietronica. What new music are you listening to?

DP: Too much Justin Bieber…

MG: I’m really digging on Basement and Superhumanoids. There’s this Paerish song called “Undone” I’m totally obsessed with. Also just started listening to Schoolboy Q.

‘Summer Sucks’ is self released and available to purchase on iTunes now.

The track is a racy one, with charming falsetto vocals and clean synths.

Find out a bit more about Lexi and how she met Cosmic Retro by reading our interview with her below:

How and why did you start making music?

I started making music when I was around 2 years old. That was when I started writing little songs. It was mostly for attention, and for the most part, I succeeded in annoying my parents to no end with my racket. I hadn’t realized yet that loud does not equal good. I started playing piano around 9 and really began honing my craft around 13. For some reason I felt like I had a story to tell and that I wanted to do so through song. It was sort of like a sneaky way of telling people how I felt about them.

Describe your sound in three words.

Pretty Damn Catchy.

Where do you cite your musical influences from?

I learned a lot about classic rock and oldies from our elementary school carpools. It was my introduction to really really solid melodies & hooks. And in college, my roommate introduced me to indie pop & glam rock. Throughout my musical education, I have become inspired by a variety of artists with very different styles; From The Beatles to Bat for Lashes; Radiohead to The Talking Heads.

How did you feel when Joseph Gordon-Levitt chose your track for his HitREcord show?

Stoked & honored! What more can I say? It’s Mr. Tasha McCauley for crying out loud!

Your new track ‘Ready Aim Fire’ features Cosmic Retro. How did that come about?

Cosmic Retro is this awesome producer who is also part of Joseph Gordon-Levitt’s online production company, HitRECord.org (as I am). I am a little bit obsessed with the 80s, so when I found his track on the site I felt compelled to jump on with a melody & lyrics that could do his amazing instrumental justice. He’s fantastic. I’ve only met him once in person, when he was rolling through New York. He was the one wearing the ridiculous yellow boots (his words).

We love new music at Indietronica. What new music are you listening to?

Something new from 2015 that I’m diggin’ right now is “Lisa Sawyer” by Leon Bridges. But his whole album is really fantastic retro-soul. I am also loving the delicious indie pop track “10,000 Emerald Pools” by BØRNS.

STAMPS is indie-pop-rock duo who have started making and self producing their own tracks.

We had a little chat with them about how they got into music:

How and why did you start making music?

(Ren) I started singing in musical theater productions and operas at five years old, so music has always been a huge passion of mine. I wrote my first song when I was eight years old, sitting on a staircase with my Lisa Frank notebook about my first “boyfriend” who couldn’t decide if he wanted to date me or my best friend, (Second grade is a DOOZY) and I haven’t stopped writing since. Adam was in a number of bands, making music since he was in middle school, and together, we have been writing songs and producing music for the past four and a half years.

Ren, you moved from your home town of Cypress in Texas to Los Angeles when you were just 17. Do you think that has shaped the music you write today?

Definitely! When I left home, I was only a junior in high school. I somehow convinced my parents that moving to L.A. and finishing my senior year online while touring the country in a van we named STAMPS the Van Morrison was a good idea, and was thrown into a world that I’d always wanted to be a part of. It’s shaped my writing, my music, and who I am as a person. Having to be independent and self-sufficient as a teenager is never easy, but it made me work harder than I ever had to before.

Describe your sound in three words.

Pop, Funky, Melodic

Where do you cite your musical influences from?

Our musical taste varies from The Beatles, The Strokes, No Doubt, The Cardigans, Phoenix, Frank Sinatra, anything from the Motown era…to pretty much anything!

How do you think your music will be making a stamp on the indietronica world?

We have been making music for years now, and have gone through a lot of experimenting with what we want our sound to be, and with these new songs, I think we finally found out exactly where we stand in the music world. With producing our own records, we are able to find that blend of all of our unique musical influences and really make the songs our own…a fine line of blending real instruments with electronic elements.

We love new music at Indietronica. What new music are you listening to?

This isn’t new, but it’s our favourite record of all-time…If you haven’t listened to ‘RAM’ by Paul and Linda McCartney, get ready for a life changing experience.